Apr 11, 2014 (LBO) - With a second 300 MegaWatt power plant beginning test runs, more than one third of Sri Lanka's daily electricity needs are now being generated from coal-fired energy, official data show.

On the April 09, out of the daily energy requirement of 35.6 GigaWatt hours (millions of units of electricity), 35.6 percent came from coal. On April 08, 36.8 percent came from coal.

Coal accounted for a little over 20 percent of daily energy needs, when the first plant was commissioned.

The second Chinese-built plant is not in commercial production and will be put through series of tests by its builders over the next few months, before being handed over to the CEB, Senajith Dasanayake, deputy general manager and business and operational strategy said.

Depending on the test schedule and problems identified during the testing process, the plant will be shut down from time to time, he said.

Dasanayake said the plant could be shut down more than a week allowing it to cool, access components.

On several days however it had been running at full 300 MegaWatt capacity.

Unlike a typical hydro plant of a similar capacity a thermal plant driven by coal or diesel can deliver about twice or three times the energy as they are run throughout the year.

Hydro plants in Sri Lanka typical have plant factors (the proportion of time it can operate in a year compared to the total time available) of around 30 to 40 percent depending on water availability and size.

This compares to 80 percent or more for a coal plant, which includes shut downs for annual maintenance. Most of Sri Lanka's large hydros are now used as peaking plants during the night except for small plants with minimal storage.

In 2013 the plant had been available for operations (availability factor) 76 percent of the time, CEB General Manager Shavi Fernando told LBO in January.

In practice however the plant is operated at a lower factor due to fears of system stability during the night off peak. The latest Central Bank data shows that it was operated at 55 percent plant factor.

The 15-year pause or 'hiatus' in global warming despite billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere over the period is thought to be partly caused by aerosols from Chinese coal plants which reflect sunlight back to space.

Sri Lanka however uses low-sulfur coal, which is said to contribute less to global cooling.

Other research had pointed to ocean absorption of heat. Skeptics of 'man-made global warming' draw parallels with solar cycles and earlier cooling and warming periods on the earth.

There was a scientist in Australia who refused to accept evidence of growing ice in the southern hemisphere.

He believed in their models which shows the world is warming and the ice sheets are melting. Most claim this to be overwhelming scientific consensus.

So he along with some greenies took a trip down to replicate the Mawson expedition and to prove that the melting ice is happening. Well Mawson reached Antarctica 100 years ago without getting stuck in ice. But 100 years after with so much CO2 in atmosphere, the journey got stuck in ice, there was so much ice that even the rescue ice breakers got stuck. Finally it was the CO2 that helped them get to safety

2.weather manApr 18

This is an inescapable fact now. Neither the UK met office nor any of the computer models that predicts a warming disaster managed to forecast the 'hiatus'.

Fact is it is very difficult to forecast weather, let alone climate.

The Met office is in hot water for just forecasting a dry winter when the country was flooded.

The 'climate sensitivity' to Co2 - a trace gas in the atmosphere way after all that is said and done - is another can of worms.

Up to now the the argument has been: C02 is rising, temperature is rising. Therefore the two are related.

So if C02 is rising and temperature is not rising then what?

It is a legitimate question that anyone, not only a scientist, can ask. For true believers to label them deniers, flat earthers or loonies and non-believers is not 'scientific'. That was the preserve of the church.

That is why critics say it is environmental evangelism, not science.

1.ChronosApr 15

From your own link to the Met Office papers:

"The final paper shows that the recent pause in global surface temperature rise does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century. Nor does it invalidate the fundamental physics of global warming, the scientific basis of climate models and their estimates of climate sensitivity."